This report will make you ashamed...of the US and its complete lack of actually doing anything about making the situation better.

Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages.

Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.

Six years after the US and Britain "freed" Afghan women from the oppressive Taliban regime, a new report proves that life is just as bad for most, and worse in some cases.

Projects started in the optimistic days of 2002 have begun to wane as the UK and its Nato allies fail to treat women's rights as a priority, workers in the country insist.

The statistics in the report from Womankind, Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, make shocking reading. Violent attacks against females, usually domestic, are at epidemic proportions with 87 per cent of females complaining of such abuse – half of it sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced.

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

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Last edited by Catherine on Tue Feb 26, 2008 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

It is worse than that, we DO do something. The problem is the things we do only make the situation worse. Afghanistan has become a nation ruled by drug lords and warlords, the central government barely keeps control of Kabul, and they have no effect outside the capital. Many of the areas outside the capitol are still in Taliban control, and those not in Taliban control have become the perfect example the Narco-State. The radical Islamic fundamentalist point of view is women are baby machines and should not be seen or heard except to provide children. We bombed them into the Stone Age and then let the wolves take over. Then again, what we can expect from a government like ours that couldn't get the Equal Rights Amendment put in place.

_________________“I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat.”-Will Rogers